CLAYTON, Mo. (KSDK) - A 51-year-old Maplewood man was sentenced Friday to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for stabbing and killing three employees of the Metropolitan Sewer District more than 10 years ago.

Mitchell Osburn entered an Alford Plea in May 2013 in St. Louis County Court, not exactly admitting to the crime, but acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence for a conviction.

Osburn was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of armed criminal action in the March 8, 2002 stabbing deaths of 46-year-old Steven Weiss of north St. Louis County, 45-year-old Joseph Bisso of High Ridge, and 45-year-old Robert Whitson of Bourbon.

The three victims were gathered at Lions Park in Valley Park after a day's work at the nearby Grand Glaize maintenance facility when Osburn walked up and began attacking the men.

A fourth Metropolitan Sewer District worker, who was also at the park with his family, saw what was happening and called police. A fifth worker tried to block Osburn's escape after the attack.

Osburn was located several days at a Brentwood hardware store where he was singing and carrying a foreign language essay on religion.

The case had been delayed over the years for a series of mental evaluations and a court order forcing Osburn to take medication during his treatment.

Osburn was previously convicted in the 1978 murder of car salesman Greg Bond near Columbia, Missouri while taking a car on a test drive. Osburn and a teen accomplice were accused of shooting and killing Bond and dumping his body near Finger Lake in northern Boone County. The pair were arrested days later trying to conceal the murder weapon and other evidence in a cemetery in El Reno, Oklahoma.

Court records show Osburn was released from prison in the Bond homicide in 1997.